Security

Passwords

Once you post something to the web, you see, you simply can't take it back. Many people have had to learn this lesson the hard way, unfortunately, after discovering that the "delete" button doesn't really work to delete something from the internet as a whole. The embarrassing missive lives on and on, in the web service's archives, in Google's cache, and eventually in the Internet Archive itself.
Center for Democracy &amp; Technology. Facebook’s New Privacy Settings: Here’s What Changed. Facebook today announced a revamp of its user privacy controls, responding to widespread public criticism following its f8 conference product launches with systematic changes that it said came out of weeks of nights-and-weekend work by its top engineers and designers.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the release a “modern privacy system” that reflects what the site has become and incorporates feedback from users. “We made a lot of changes at the same time, and a lot of what we were trying to do we didn’t communicate that well,” said Zuckerberg. He acknowledged users felt there were so many controls that they were overwhelmed and didn’t feel comfortable sharing.
4 tools to help reclaim Facebook privacy – SciTechBlog - CNN.com. To some users and tech writers, it appears Facebook won’t let anything stand in the way of its quest for World Wide Web domination.

Maybe not even its users’ privacy. As most Facebook users already know, the social networking site has yet again updated its privacy settings.
5 Essential Facebook Privacy Tips. Adam Rosenberg is the Online Community Manager at Salsa Labs.

Most recently, he was the New Media Manager at the Center for Democracy & Technology where his work focused on Internet privacy, data protection, cybersecurity and open government issues. The latest changes to Facebook have seen their fair share of criticism, with many users examining more closely the definition of “public vs. private.” Some users have been turned off enough by Facebook's envelope pushing when it comes to privacy to go so far as to contemplate a mass Facebook exodus.

Why Facebook Changed Its Privacy Strategy. We reported yesterday that Facebook is aiming to get people to be more public on the site and that anyone who hasn't changed their privacy settings will now see it "recommended" that their status updates, photos etc. be exposed to the whole web.

I had a unique opportunity to speak to Barry Schnitt, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Policy at Facebook and quite a frank guy, at length this afternoon about Facebook's privacy policy changes. Schnitt said "your understanding is basically correct," but disagreed with the negative light I saw the change in.
The Day Facebook Changed Forever: Messages to Become Public By D. One of the most anticipated days in the history of social networking site Facebook has finally come: the company announced today that it has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public at large by default instead of being visible only to a user's approved friends.

UPDATE: After we wrote this post, Facebook HQ emailed to tell us that the first wave of users who get this feature will have their messages made public by default because their profiles were already marked as public, but that when they open the feature up to subsequent users - those users will have default privacy settings that match their pre-existing profile privacy settings.

Unfortunately, in our tests so far (see our screencast) - we haven't been able to successfully change our default message settings back to friends-only, it stays stuck on public.
FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Di. Alison Driscoll is an interactive copywriter and social media consultant who specializes in .

She authors a blog at alisondriscoll.com. provides users with the opportunity to share just about everything: photos, links, videos, virtual gifts and random musings in the form of status updates. Under the guise of “being social” and “maintaining transparency,” Facebook fiends post anything and everything about themselves on this now omnipresent social network. This begs the question, how much is too much? Younger generations have no problem sharing nearly every detail of their lives, but is publicly posting all this minutiae really such a good idea?
Downloads: Close&#039;n Forget Removes Browser Tracks of the Sit. I just NOW saw this which sorta saddens me cus i have been looking for something like this for a while, as am getting annoyed with always opening up my cookie monster app and manual deleting cookies.

Anyway, for Flash Content I am using a fox addon called Better Privacy that will auto clear them on close of fox or manually scan for them. I use distrust for the privacy stuff.... good find, thanks for the post (even if it is old news now)
Twitter Worm Could Take Over Your Computer (in Theory) - ReadWri. Before everyone panics, let's get one thing clear: the new Twitter worm is only a proof-of-concept devised by computer security researchers at Secure Science - it is not out in the wild.

That said, its very existence should raise some questions about the state of security at Twitter - something that's more important than ever given how rapidly the service is becoming mainstream. This latest security concern involves an attack, similar to the clickjacking incident from last month, that takes advantage of a web programming error on Twitter's support site. The result of the attack would force users to post unwanted messages to their Twitter stream.
Privacy: Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. How to make the most of social networking on Facebook - USATODAY. By Edward C.

Baig, USA TODAY So you've finally enlisted in Facebook. Only now you're wondering if you ought to just duck.
Twitter Phishing: Protecting Yourself. This article will take approx 2 minutes to read. A funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Or at least, a funny thing happened over the weekend with regards to Twitter, spam and phishing (from Chris Pirillo). I really had no plans to outline my thoughts on the scam, because it is already being covered ad nauseum.

However, I feel like I have to anyway.
Weak Password Brings &#039;Happiness&#039; to Twitter Hacker. An 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks has admitted to Monday’s hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama’s, and the official feed for Fox News. The hacker, who goes by the handle GMZ, told Threat Level on Tuesday he gained entry to Twitter’s administrative control panel by pointing an automated password-guesser at a popular user’s account. The user turned out to be a member of Twitter’s support staff, who’d chosen the weak password "happiness.
" Cracking the site was easy, because Twitter allowed an unlimited number of rapid-fire log-in attempts. "I feel it’s another case of administrators not putting forth effort toward one of the most obvious and overused security flaws," he wrote in an IM interview. "I’m sure they find it difficult to admit it.

"
Free Online Password Manager. Featured Download: Darik&#039;s Boot and Nuke is the Nuclear Opt. I use DBAN pretty frequently at work to wipe hard drives in systems that I dispose of. It's pretty easy to use, and highly configurable. Usually, I'll do a single pass wipe to clear a desktop system, but we recently disposed of 15 cash register system servers that we had to be very careful about the data on, so I actually did the 7 pass DoD wipe before disposing of the drives.